Role in IT decision-making process:Align Business & IT GoalsCreate IT StrategyDetermine IT NeedsManage Vendor RelationshipsEvaluate/Specify Brands or VendorsOther RoleAuthorize PurchasesNot Involved

Work Phone:

Company:

Company Size:

Industry:

Street Address

City:

Zip/postal code

State/Province:

Country:

Occasionally, we send subscribers special offers from select partners. Would you like to receive these special partner offers via e-mail?YesNo

Your registration with Eweek will include the following free email newsletter(s):News & Views

By submitting your wireless number, you agree that eWEEK, its related properties, and vendor partners providing content you view may contact you using contact center technology. Your consent is not required to view content or use site features.

By clicking on the "Register" button below, I agree that I have carefully read the Terms of Service and the Privacy Policy and I agree to be legally bound by all such terms.

We've been hearing about how the new IT world eventually will be powered by a few new economies: 1) the application economy; 2) the internet of things economy; and/or 3) the API (application programming interface) economy.

No one of them will be dominant; they're all relevant because they rely upon each other to carry out their functions.

Although the API management economy sounds the geekiest and least-understandable of the three, it's among the most important to IT companies, and for a lot of reasons.

Oracle was the latest big-time tech company to see this light and do something about when it announced Jan. 19 that it is acquiring little-known, San Francisco-based Apiary to provide an API division for itself. Terms of the deal were not released.

Further reading

Red Hat bought 3Scale last June and Google bought Apigee last September for pretty much the same reasons: to own good management software for APIs, which are the main connectors of everything in the internet. These connectors have to work efficiently and be secure for transactions to be handled well for both vendor and customer.

Other API Providers Might Be Moving, Too

A number of other companies, such as CA, Dell, Cisco Systems, ServiceNow, BMC, ManageEngine, Experian and VMware, already have API-dedicated resources in house.

Six-year-old Apiary.io makes a hosted suite of tools that help companies build web APIs quickly, test and monitor them and document them. It provides API owners with necessary infrastructure and helps them build relationship with their users.